Publications

June 2010 (Revised December 2013)
Case

Hang Lung Properties and the Chengdu Decision (A)

By: John D. Macomber, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-Ho Wong

A residential real estate developer competes in a heated auction for a prime retail development site in the interior of China during the 2009 boom. Total project cost might be in excess of $1 billion U.S. for over 4,000,000 square feet of building. Hang Lung Properties... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Return; Geographic Location; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Infrastructure; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; Chengdu

May 2009 (Revised June 2009)
Case

Areva

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Areva, the world's market leader in civilian nuclear power, was positioned to take advantage of the resurgence of nuclear power. However, three issues clouded the positive outlook: (1) a 1.7 billion euro loss on the construction of the first next generation nuclear... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Financial Statements; Energy Generation; Cash Flow; Investment; Energy Industry; Europe

January 2014
Case

Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor: India's Road to Prosperity?

By: John Macomber and Vidhya Muthuram

The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) was an ambitious $90 billion infrastructure project covering the 1483-km distance between Delhi and Mumbai. The project would create new industrial townships, high speed freight lines, six-lane expressways, airports, ports... View Details

October 2003 (Revised February 2004)
Background Note

Introduction to the Large-Scale Investment (LSI) Course at Harvard Business School

By: Benjamin C. Esty

Introduces students to the Large-Scale Investment (LSI) course taught at Harvard Business School. LSI is a case-based course about project finance that is designed for second-year MBA students. The course is about project finance, which involves creation of a legally... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Project Finance; Investment; Projects

11 Oct 2011
Working Paper Summaries

US Healthcare Reform and the Pharmaceutical Industry

Keywords: by Arthur Daemmrich; Pharmaceutical; Health

October 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Haier: Taking a Chinese Company Global

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Tarun Khanna and Ingrid Vargas

In 2005, Haier, China's leading appliance manufacturer, had over $12 billion in worldwide sales and was the third-ranked global appliance brand behind Whirlpool and GE. Describes Haier's rise from a defunct refrigerator factory in China's Qingdao province to an... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Brands and Branding; Manufacturing Industry; Consumer Products Industry; China

January 2019 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Chinese Infrastructure Investments in Sri Lanka: A Pearl or a Teardrop on the Belt and Road?

By: Meg Rithmire and Yihao Li

In 2015, a surprise presidential election result seemed to imperil Chinese investments in Sri Lanka, which were associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build global infrastructure. In the previous decade, China had undertaken two major projects in the... View Details

Keywords: Belt And Road Initiative; Investment; Infrastructure; China; Sri Lanka

February 2009
Article

GHG Trading Framework for the U.S. Biofuels Sector

By: Subbu Kumarappan and Satish V. Joshi

Substitution of petroleum fuels with biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel has been shown to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These GHG reductions can be traded in the emerging carbon markets, and methodologies for quantifying and trading are still being... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Sources; Energy Industry; United States

December 2023
Article

Advances in Power-to-Gas Technologies: Cost and Conversion Efficiency

By: Gunther Glenk, Philip Holler and Stefan Reichelstein

Widespread adoption of hydrogen as an energy carrier is widely believed to require continued advances in Power-to-Gas (PtG) technologies. Here we provide a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of system prices and conversion efficiency for three currently prevalent... View Details

October 2015
Case

Facebook: The First Ten Years

By: Shane Greenstein, Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

Facebook celebrated its ten year anniversary in February 2014. Over the past decade it has grown into the largest social network in the world with one billion users. After filing an IPO in 2012 at a $104 billion valuation (the third largest IPO in U.S. history), the... View Details

Keywords: Social Networks; Technology; Facebook; Entrepreneurship; Profit; Open Source Distribution; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Social Media; Information Technology Industry

2020
Working Paper

Internal Models, Make Believe Prices, and Bond Market Cornering

By: Ishita Sen and Varun Sharma

Exploiting position-level heterogeneity in regulatory incentives to misreport and novel data on regulators, we document that U.S. life insurers inflate the values of corporate bonds using internal models. We estimate an additional $9-$18 billion decline in regulatory... View Details

Keywords: Life Insurers; Capital Regulation; Internal Models; Corporate Bonds; Regulatory Supervision; Concentrated Ownership; Bonds; Capital; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Insurance; Investment Portfolio

SSRN

July 2009 (Revised June 2015)
Case

Citigroup's Exchange Offer

By: Robin Greenwood and James Quinn

Citigroup faced considerable distress in early 2009. In late 2008, the bank had accepted $45 billion in preferred equity from the United States government via the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Yet, the stock had continued to slide in early 2009. In late... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Capital Markets; Banks and Banking; Stocks; Price; Globalized Markets and Industries; Financial Services Industry

Research Summary

Mobile web advertising: maximum entropy banner allocation

The worldwide mobile advertising market, currently $3 billion in size, is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2011. Online and mobile advertising employs two main pricing models: pay-per-click (CPC) and pay-per-impression (CPM). To date, most of the... View Details

December 2010 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Cola Wars Continue: Coke and Pepsi in 2010

By: David B. Yoffie and Renee Kim

Examines the industry structure and competitive strategy of Coca-Cola and Pepsi over 100 years of rivalry. The most intense battles of the cola wars were fought over the $74 billion CSD industry in the United States, where the average American consumes 46 gallons of... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

June 2005 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Yamanote Kaikan

By: Robin Greenwood, Arthur I Segel and Joshua Katzin

In 2001, James O'Connell, president of Holyoke Japan, an affiliate of Larson Capital, a distress debt private equity firm, wants to bid on a 90 billion yen loan currently in default by the borrower, Sanjo Enterprises, for a popular wedding and banquet facility with an... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Private Equity; Price; Bids and Bidding; Competition; Japan

2017
Chapter

Innovation Policies

By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Past work has shown that failure tolerance by principals has the potential to stimulate innovation, but has not examined how this affects which projects principals will start. We demonstrate that failure tolerance has an equilibrium price – in terms of an investor’s... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Investing; Abandonment Option; Failure Tolerance; Innovation and Invention; Venture Capital; Attitudes; Investment; Failure

2017
Working Paper

Innovation Policies

By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Past work has shown that failure tolerance by principals has the potential to stimulate innovation, but has not examined how this affects which projects principals will start. We demonstrate that failure tolerance has an equilibrium price ― in terms of an investor's... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Investing; Abandonment Option; Failure Tolerance; Venture Capital; Attitudes; Investment; Failure; Innovation and Invention

SSRN

Working Paper

The Long-Run Dynamics of Electricity Demand: Evidence from Municipal Aggregation

By: Tatyana Deryugina, Alexander MacKay and Julian Reif

Economic theory suggests that demand is more elastic in the long run relative to the short run, but evidence on the empirical relevance of this phenomenon is scarce. We study the dynamics of residential electricity demand by exploiting price variation arising from a... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Demand and Consumers; Price; Policy; Mathematical Methods